Talk:J. Edgar Hoover
One joke I've always liked is: "The FBI is great at cleaning things up and leaving no traces. Why do you think their leader was named Hoover?" Barrel Nagurski 12:34, October 17, 2010 (UTC) :That is a good one. Turtle Fan 02:28, October 18, 2010 (UTC) So TR, I know a while ago we were speculating on how Hoover could have been even worse than Stalin. Does the novel give any details? Turtle Fan (talk) 02:53, April 21, 2015 (UTC) :Yes :*SPOILERS* :One of the big changes from the story to the book is the three-way conflict among Garner, Hoover and Scriabin. They don't rush to murder each other with Hoover winning. Garner takes office, and begins trying to right the ship a bit. He accepts the resignations of the entire Cabinet, save Dean Acheson (Sec of State) and George Marshall (Sec of War). He also assigns Kagan, Mikoian, and Scriabin as ambassadors to various far off places. Scriabin refuses, and arranges for the deaths of Acheson and Marshall, leaving no legal successor to the presidency. He then gets an impeachment against Garner going for all the stuff Steele did, even though Garner had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. Scriabin gets hit by a car, but it's too late. Garner is impeached, convicted, and removed. Since there is no legal successor, Hoover declares that Congress is trying to assume the powers of the executive, declares martial law, and declares himself Director of the country. Similar to the conversations we had, actually: he has no right to be head of state, and begins cracking down even harder to keep the Oval Office. TR (talk) 16:47, April 21, 2015 (UTC) ::Hmm, interesting. And more or less (in a very extreme way) what Truman warned of at about this time in OTL when he insisted on Congressional leadership being ranked ahead of Cabinet secretaries in the line of presidential succession. Turtle Fan (talk) 15:20, April 22, 2015 (UTC) POTUS vs. Director I initially placed Hoover in the POTUS ATL cat because of the outcome of the story. While he wasn't explicitly called POTUS in the story, it seemed a logical inference. Now that the novel declares him the "Director", I'm inclined to take him out of POTUS ATL and move him to the North American Heads of State Fictional cat. This is consistent with what we've done in other instances where a one-off HOS changed or broke with their country's legal titles. For example, Oliver Cromwell is in the Heads of State of Europe cat, not Monarchs of England. If anyone thinks I should leave well enough alone, let me know. TR (talk) 19:41, April 30, 2015 (UTC) :The thing is, coups like that don't necessarily result in the person who lead the coup seizing the head of state role. If you want to rule the US as Director, for instance, you might find it very useful to give some harmless nonentity the title of President to pull on a velvet glove over your iron fist. That is in fact how Stalin operated in OTL: He never held the head of state title (which was Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet). He let Kalinin hold the title and preside at official functions like receiving ambassadors' credentials, but of course not for one millisecond did anyone anywhere believe Kalinin was actually in charge. He had the same arrangement with Shvernok after Kalinin died. ::The novel ends with Hoover having publicly announced that he has "no choice" but to take emergency executive powers to prevent Congress from doing it. In his last direct appearance, he is operating out of the Oval Office. In other words, J. Edgar seems to be offering himself as the emergency head of state and government/successor to the POTUS rather than operating through a puppet. :::Well even if he's not keeping a puppet around for ceremonial purposes and/or to maintain a legal fiction, "emergency executive powers" don't imply head of state to me. The setting of this story predates the 25th Amendment, but since that went on the books there have been three instances of VPs formally assuming the role of Acting President (never for more than a few hours). They don't get head of state privileges. There are other, older examples of VPs informally filling in for temporarily incapacitated Presidents in limited capacities, invoking the Twelfth and Twentieth Amendments (but not to the full extent which the languages of those amendments would have seemed to permit). Both were part of the constitution before the POD of JS (well before any historically significant changes occurred; the Twentieth was ratified after Stalin's parents would have come to America). Hoover could have invoked those amendments to make himself Acting President (it would stretch the amendments to their breaking points, or maybe past them, but it's his only option if he wants to be legitimized by anything other than "Might makes right.") Would that make him head of state? I don't think so. :::I recall not long ago we were spitballing what would have happened if the Nazis had managed to get the entire British Royal Family under their thumb. We assumed that the Canadian parliament would refuse to recognize whomever they installed in the palace and would declare the monarchy vacant. As I recall, that left three options: declare Canada a republic; find some distant royal cousin living somewhere in Allied territory and make him king; or let the Governor-General exercise all royal prerogatives indefinitely without needing to run anything past the crown at all. That still would not make the G-G king, however, and thus would not make him head of state. He'd officiate at the functions where the head of state is usually needed, but would not assume the status himself. If you had an acting president with no possibility of a permanent president being chosen in the foreseeable future, it would probably be much the same as Option #3. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:26, May 3, 2015 (UTC) ::At a bare minimum, do we agree J. Edgar should not be listed in the POTUS cat? TR (talk) 22:26, April 30, 2015 (UTC) :::Yes, certainly. If he's making any effort whatsoever to adhere to the constitution, he's Acting President. If he's disregarding the constitution altogether, the title of President of the United States loses its meaning altogether unless or until he (or someone) writes a new one and makes it stick. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:26, May 3, 2015 (UTC) :It might not be a bad idea to create a vague catch-all category like Rulers (subdivided by region and OTL/ATL/Fantasy, of course) for these vague cases, though I'm not sure exactly how many we'd have. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:44, April 30, 2015 (UTC) :We do have the catch-all Category:Dictators with their ATL/OTL splits. That might give us a starting point. TR (talk) 22:26, April 30, 2015 (UTC) :::Hmm, yes, that's a good idea. It's conceivable that a small-d democrat might find himself in this situation (like the various people who tried to keep some semblance of a federal government going in Birmo's Without Warning before they got a new constitution written) but there's no doubt whatsoever that Hoover's a dictator here. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:26, May 3, 2015 (UTC) ::I agree that Hoover wasn't claiming to be POTUS. He gave himself "emergency powers" as Director during a constitutional crises since there were no legal successors to Garner when he was impeached. It is only a "temporary" measure until order is restored. We might look at some of the dictatorships in South America post-WWII for guidance to what Turtledove might have had in mind since he does have Charlie Sullivan make references to S.A. banana republics after Steele died. ML4E (talk) 18:20, May 1, 2015 (UTC) :::Yeah, that strikes me as a good starting point. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:26, May 3, 2015 (UTC)